The Magic Circle (6 page)

I pull out the amethyst and hold it up to catch the sun. I want the baron to see. I draw a magic circle, knowing that I will not use it. The baron knows nothing.

I set the amethyst on the ground inside the circle. I need it not.

The baby nuzzles against my breast. I lean over her and bite away the finger with one swift gnash of the teeth. The baby shrieks. I put my finger to the open wound and sing. My voice is raspy and old, but my words are charmed. The infant’s sobs are hiccoughs now.

My ears catch the noise. Life stirs in the dry brush. I
look. A field mouse has strayed into the open. It nudges at something yellow in the dirt just outside the line of the magic circle.

I watch as the baby’s hiccoughs subside and she sleeps again. The yellow is light and dark. Gold. The mouse gives a flick of the nose, and the ring flops over. I can see all of it now. It reminds me of something. Grape leaves with clusters of grapes. Spanish gold. I think back to Otto of the West Forest. Is this the ring his wife wore? The ring I marveled at so many years ago, before I ever thought of joining the league of healers? And, yes, there is the figure eight in the middle. But the ring is on its side, and now I see. Oh, yes. I laugh at my own stupidity. It is not an eight at all. It is the snake that swallows its own tail—it is the infinity symbol.

The ring’s glory shines warmly. It seems almost liquid, like the purest gold. And now it comes to me as a revelation: The ring’s essence is holy. The precious stones that nobles have given me—Asian rubies and sapphires, African diamonds—all shine with earthly beauty. Even the amethyst I use to draw the magic circle was not holy on its own—it became holy through being blessed. But this gold shines with heavenly beauty. With an intrinsic holiness. I want that holiness. I want the lordly gold. I want the purest mineral of all to mark my purest of
souls. I want all to see this ring adorn my heavenly beauty.

The mouse scurries off. The baby sniffles in its sleep. The blood has already stopped flowing. The world is at peace, waiting for me to act. I look again at the ring.

The ring is perfect. And, oh, yes, of course, the ring is not for me. How could I make such a mistake? Asa awaits the perfect ring. Have I not thought this just today? This ring is for Asa. Of course. The ring will adorn her, and, in turn, her glow will light my world. Oh, yes.

Yet the ring lies outside the magic circle. Would that I could call the mouse back to flip the ring within the circle. But what am I thinking? I have summoned no demons. There is no reason to suspect that demons lie outside the circle. And since I am pure of heart, no demon that is not summoned can harm me even outside the circle. I am giddy with anticipation. I laugh. I laugh with the inebriation of the rapture to come. When I am in control of myself once more, I plan my actions. I will slip on the ring and hide my hand in the folds of my cloak. Later, when I am home alone with Asa, I will present it to her. I can see her loving face. Oh, what grace God has given us.

I reach my fingers tentatively toward the ring.

It glows.

I am touching the magic circle’s periphery now.

The ring dazzles.

I slide my index finger into the ring.

I am snatched from the circle. The baby falls to the ground and wails. I am squeezed until I feel the breath of life going. I cannot shout.

Voices hiss around my ears. “We have you. At last.”

“You were not summoned,” I want to say. But I have no breath.

As if Baal can read my thoughts, his three voices say, “When you bit the finger, you released us.”

But I bit off fingers when I was a midwife, I am thinking, and you never came then.

“It is you who drew the magic circle, you who made this moment a challenge. We merely rose to the challenge. We are permitted to accept a challenge.” The voices laugh in a three-part harmony. “Heavenly beauty! Look at your heavenly beauty! See how they gape at your heavenly beauty!” The voices are raucous. “Throw away your amethyst. You will no longer summon devils. Instead, we will summon you!” The laughter is like the screaming of wildcats. “You are no longer the Ugly Sorceress. You are the Ugly Witch.”

The light is fading. I feel darkness about to overtake me. I want my ears to go deaf. I must not allow myself
to hear the words I know will come. I have been pronounced a witch. There is an order to come—oh, damned and hellish order. I must not hear it. I hold my palms tight over my ears.

But the voices are too clever for me. They bypass my ears entirely. They speak inside my head. “Eat the child.”

I close my mind. Demons are stupid, not clever. I must not think they are clever. They are stupid. All of them, every last one, was tricked into devilhood by the acts of Satan. If Satan could trick them, so can I.

“Stupid, are we?” The voices boom inside my head. “No one tricks us. Eat that baby!”

I am thrown on the ground. My ribs split. The air rushes back into my lungs. I breathe unwillingly. “Never,” I say.

The laughter is deafening. “You have but one choice.”

“I will never serve the forces of evil,” I scream.

And suddenly footsteps are loud and multiple. The baron’s men rush at me from every direction. They come out from behind every tree.

“She’s a witch!”

“I saw her eat the finger!”

“She works with devils!”

“Burn her!”

The air is filled with starlings.

W
hat proof do you have?” Peter’s voice rises over the rest.

I cannot look at him as they stack the wood at Asa’s and my feet. Only forty-eight hours have passed since I was arrested in the birch grove, yet it seems an eternity. Asa has said nothing up to this point. Her face is slack. Her mouth hangs partway open. Her eyes are glassy. We are tied to a young birch tree. They are saying the birch is now evil, because the grove has been my healing place.

I cannot look at Peter—if he sees my eyes, he will know it is true; I am a witch. I cannot bear to see the pain that would bring him.

“Show me proof, or she goes free.” Peter’s voice is loud and deep.

“The witch-marks,” screams Tzipi, Tzipi whose children I brought into this world. Tzipi, whom no other midwife would help because she is not Christian. Tzipi, who gave me the very first ribbon for Asa’s hair. If anyone should be loyal to me in this moment, it is Tzipi. But, of course, if anyone cannot afford to be loyal to me, it is Tzipi. For the others would spring upon her at the slightest provocation. Tzipi has always been in danger. She can only strengthen herself by denouncing me now. Oh, wretched Tzipi.

If I could cry, I would. I would wail, for Tzipi and Asa and Peter and myself. But witches have no tears.

My eyes turn to Tzipi, and I can see her old age ahead. I know her son Erik will die before his wife gives birth. I know that within Tzipi a cancer will languidly lick its way from organ to organ. I could have stopped it. I could have healed her, but for this ring that will not budge from my index finger no matter how hard I rip at it.

I hate the ring now. It was for desire of the ring that I lost all grace. I want to throw the ring away, though it would be a futile gesture. The ring is not the source of evil—it has no power. I know my own image of myself as heavenly destroyed me. Vain image. I forgot the lesson
of the amethyst. Oh, wretched drunken stupor that goes by the name of hubris!

Still, I would be rid of this ring before I die if only I could. I would bite my finger off, if my hands were not tied behind my back. My teeth are iron now. I could bite my own leg in two. And no blood would I taste. I have no blood. Everything about me is witchery.

“Show me!” Peter kicks his way through the woodpile, “Show me!” he shouts. He is a strong young man now. I am proud of his strength. And I burn with that pride. It is my pride, no one else’s. I can no longer even think the name of the one whose hands I used to roll in. I am alone. There is no reason to fight pride any longer. I am excruciatingly alone.

Tzipi rips my cloak open. On my right arm, where there never was a mole before, there is now a large black one.

“A common mole!” Peter touches the mole. “See.” He holds his finger up. “I am not harmed. It is a common mole.”

Suddenly the one black mole breaks into a cluster of moles that forms an eight-pointed star. Tzipi shrieks. She steps backward, hands to her cheeks, shaking her head from side to side. “The mark of the incubi.”

It is not the mark of incubi; I know that. Incubi are
male demons that mate with sleeping women. No demon has mated with me. I have not slept since I became a witch, two afternoons ago in this birch grove. I will never sleep again.

Peter stares at the mole star. His head is bent over my arm. I feel his tears fall on my skin. They turn to ice as they touch me. “No,” he sobs, quickly brushing the ice pearls away before anyone else can see.

“Stand aside.” A small man in red robes stands in front of me. “I am Herr Pastor Dean Hartmann von Rosenbach of the Wurzburg Cathedral. I have traveled great distances at the request of the Baron von Oynhausen. You must listen to me, for I am the mouth of God.” He holds a pin the length of his hand. He turns to the crowd. “Another proof?” He points at Peter. “Is that what this misguided young man needs?” He brandishes the pin like a sword. Swiftly he lifts my cloak and runs his fingers across my thighs. He stops at the scar I got as a child, falling from a beech tree. The fall that left me terrified of heights. He jabs the pin fiercely into the scar. The pain is like lightning radiating from the metal. He pulls the pin out just as suddenly. My flesh closes over the hole. No blood appears. The pastor lets my cloak drop. He opens his hands toward the crowd. “Unquestionable, undeniable truth. The Ugly One, this ill-intended midwife,
who says she heals and thus thwarts the efforts of our real and verified surgeons, this one . . .” He points to me with his chin, then turns back to the crowd and shouts, “This one is a witch!”

“But she’s in shock,” shouts Peter. “People in shock don’t bleed.”

The pastor has turned heel and is climbing over the woodpile to the crowd.

“And you stabbed her in the thigh, in the fattest part of the body.” Peter’s voice rises in a screech. “Blood runs the thinnest there.” He is hysterical now. “And it was on a scar. Scar tissue doesn’t bleed.”

The pastor is lost in the crowd.

I look at Peter and rage with pride at his knowledge of anatomy—the knowledge I imparted to him in our weekly discussions. The irony of the situation does not escape me. I fight the laughter that would burst from my throat.

And now the crowd has pushed Peter back. The woodpile is growing, as though it is a thing alive. I hear a flutter and look toward it. Bala stands in the crowd. Her eyes meet mine. I cannot read behind her eyes, though I try. Is she the incarnation of the demon Baal? I have been asking myself this for the past forty-eight hours. I have looked for clues in Bala’s words and actions of the
past nine years. I can find no clear evidence. But even if she is Baal, what does that mean? Can she help who she is? Was she trapped like me? Did she long for a bauble, or was her weakness more worthy of sympathy than mine? Is all evil the result of entrapment? I want to talk with Bala, if only for a moment. I have been kept in isolation since I bit the child’s finger off. I have talked with no one, not even Asa. But I must talk with Bala; I must know her secret, if she harbors one. My mind reaches out to hers. I fail; her mind is shut to me, her eyes filmed over. The crowd presses on her, and she retreats.

The ache in my thigh is unrelenting.

Peter scrabbles once more across the woodpile. But this time he grabs Asa’s arm. He pulls up the velvet sleeves. On both arms there is a ring of green moles, like a circle of green mint. The devils are making a game of our demise. They think they are clever. Peter wipes a tear from his cheek and wets Asa’s arm with it. It does not turn to ice. “Asa is not a witch!” Peter lifts both arms above his head and shouts so that the veins in his neck stand out like ropes. “Asa is not a witch!”

A large man pulls Peter away with one hand and pours pitch on the wood with the other. He is Wilhelm Lutz, I am sure. I delivered him. He resembles his mother. A
pious woman. These are all pious people. Pious witch burners.

“Cry, Asa,” shouts Peter. “Show them you are not a witch.”

Asa’s eyes register briefly on Peter. “Cry?”

The big Wilhelm lights the fire. As the glow rises, a hush falls across the crowd. The only noise is the deafening crack of the fire.

I focus on the women’s faces. Many of them are looking around nervously. As the flames grow, the fear in their eyes begins to subside. They realize they have been lucky this time—they have not been denounced as witches. All women are in danger of the frivolous denunciation. Oh, would that my own denunciation had been frivolous! I would give anything to burn here as a holy woman, falsely accused, rather than as the witch I know I am.

But then the voices start within my head. “Work for us.”

I have no hesitation. “No.”

“Work for us, and we will give you the gift of metamorphosis. You can turn into the salamander of Vermillion. You will be fireproof. You can slink away into the woodpile, and they’ll never find you.”